HOUSTON — A player with strong Texas ties stands to have a big role in handling the bounty of natural gas that is writing an epic new chapter in American energy history.

DCP Midstream Partners — a Denver-based master limited partnership that's a joint venture of Houston's Phillips 66 and Spectra Energy — is building its business around the belief that the geography of the natural gas boom will require new processing and transporting capacity.

“Natural gas and crude oil are being found in places where they have not been found before, in greater quantities,” said Tom O'Connor, CEO of DCP Midstream, the entity that owns the general partner of DCP Midstream Partners.

DCP Midstream is zeroing in on natural gas liquids, byproducts of the abundant gas.

The Association of Oil Pipelines has estimated that the Eagle Ford Shale, Permian basin and other plays will create demand for an additional 500 miles per year of new natural gas liquid pipelines over the next 25 years.

“We decided we probably should be looking harder at owning more natural gas liquids infrastructure and more natural gas liquids pipelines,” O'Connor said, describing DCP's strategy to position itself as the premier one-stop services company to get natural gas liquids from the well to customers.

“We are on the front end of this energy revolution,” O'Connor said.

DCP Midstream's operations dot shale plays in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Kansas, where its processing plants remove water and natural gas liquids from gas, sending the remaining dry gas to pipelines and the liquids into a path called the Y-stream.

The Y-stream feeds fractionators, which separate natural gas liquids into components, including the fuels propane and butane and the petrochemical building block ethane.

While hardly a household name, DCP Midstream traces its ancestry back more than 80 years to Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co. Its corporate lineage also includes ties to more familiar companies, the initials of which form its name — Duke Energy and ConocoPhillips.

It has been a lucrative property for Spectra Energy and Phillips 66, which spun off from ConocoPhillips earlier this year.

It took a hit in the second quarter, however, along with many companies in the natural gas sector.

Natural gas prices already were at decade lows, as new technology drove production from previously inaccessible shale. Then a warm winter reduced demand for furnace fuel — both natural gas and liquids such as propane.

In the case of DCP Midstream, contract terms that pay it with a share of the liquids it produces left it more vulnerable to price volatility. Its second-quarter net profit fell from $55 million in 2011 to $35 million in 2012.

Despite the lower earnings, it declared a quarterly distribution of 67 cents per unit, a 5.9 percent increase over the second quarter of 2011.

Analysts say that DCP Midstream's diverse business lines — including processing, marketing and transportation — may serve as a buffer against falling prices.

Phillips 66, which recently spun off from ConocoPhillips, uses some of DCP's natural gas liquids as feedstock for its chemical plants.

“For Phillips 66, the low prices are a plus, not a negative. It almost mitigates the negative impacts of NGL prices,” said Fadel Gheit, an analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. “They are one of the largest chemical producers in the country.”

In the last couple of years, DCP has set about building infrastructure to pick up gas at the wellhead and to transport natural gas liquids to market centers on the Gulf Coast.

Analysts predict that the company will continue to benefit as new chemical and processing plants come online in the next two to five years.

“I think it's a great place to be,” said John Stekla, an analyst with IHS. “The petrochemical industry is betting tremendous sums of money that NGLs will stay advantaged as a feedstock for the rest of the world.”